Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford (2009) Ballentine Books

A marvelously intriguing book.  This is the story of a Chinese American boy in Seattle who befriended a Japanese American girl in 1942.  It follows the journey of the boy whose father is viciously anti-Japanese since they took over his native China.  Parallel to this is the same boy grown into a man who has lost his Chinese wife and discovers that the Panama Hotel has artifacts in its basement that were left by Japanese families when they were ‘evacuated’ during the war.  A jazz saxophone player provides a connecting role between the two time periods.  The writing is rich with poetic similes and observations of the human condition between generations and with young and old love.